Of an old excursion into my head

Let’s just pretend this piece WASN’T written waaay back when I was a teacher, because then the procrastination would be just too embarrassing. Especially when I’ll be returning to the School That Shall Not Be Named come monday [that’s like 48 hours], and starting more time there. Trying to have a positive attitude towards it, rise up to the challenge and all that. I should update us on how I go, on my [hopefully not pathetic] attempts to teach sec1s history and english. Pray for me yah. Anyway anyway…
This was written during an invigilation session.
[this was written in Rachel Mode.]


“I have an hour to go… again.


I honestly wouldn’t be anyone but myself, you know. Yes I have terribly bad points, so many, but what I have is mine, part of me. They make me.

Today the weather is cool, and a little chilly. I have my brother’s jacket on, the thick red one which the sports school gave but was too small for him. I guess the colour, so vivid, has some significance on Today, some impression made, an imprint that will be left behind but I know not what.
Do you think Today is impressionable? In other words, alive? Or just, a container of space and time, and whose significance is dependent on what we fill it up with? Or leave empty.

Following a certain train of thought, I would like to unveil a statement I once saw. [as if it has been hiding behind my brain’s curtain all this while.]
“The last tiger will not mourn its own passing.”
Think about it, dear readers.

And I have taken my jacket off.

Sudden random thought: The veins in my palm are twisting and moving independently, like snakes writhing leisurely because they can. If they get knotted up, will they bite my flesh? It’s quite impossible for me to concentrate and develop any one trend of thought today. Maybe because I can’t get one deep enough to be explored. Just grabbing every thought that reveals itself.
Maybe it goes like this: After shaking about in their own fashion, they Will get entangled and attempt violence in a bid to get free. All I will feel is a dull throbbing and see a slight vibration on my palm [the meaty part below the thumb] while they’re thumping each other mercilessly inside, going at it like a pair [like multiple pairs] of hammers and thongs. Soon the shuddering will get more and more pronounced and eventually explode, sending chunks of bloody meat sailing through the air. The students will recoil in revulsion, and display what Gothic students call “attraction-repulsion”. Examination order will be forgotten, chaos will reign and pandomium pong.
In the meantime, a couple of snakes will stealthily slither off on the concrete floor of the classroom, and towards the door.
Maybe I’ll go shopping for a new meaty drumstick of a palm at Heeren. At the escalator beside Swatch, where a sleezy storey high excuse of a poster prostitutes itself, showing for some strange reason a toilet bowl with two shapely legs and heels over it- enticing innocent bystanders [Escalator Ridders? Meaty Drumstick Seachers?] to enter the heady rush of employing the toilet bowl. Or to shop. shrug. Commercialisation. Who can tell.


So I just sit at the teacher’s table musing, noticing that after all my- what do you call what I have just written? Grotesque Ponderings? Nonsensical Rambling? Evidence of a Disturbed Mind?- there are about twenty minutes left before they have to stop. Did teachers used to think this way while we were frantically rushing to complete the paper? Hmmm.
Just now, my eyes looked up and caught sight of a hole in their squared ceiling. Evidently they’ve got a hollow roof, this school. I wonder what goes on up there. What fearful and wonderful mysteries. It also occurs to me that a mere black hole in t he ceiling at the back of the classroom is enough to excite my imagination. I am about to launch into the delightful possibilities, but I am also strangely stirred. My mind seems to recall a certain time, in a certain place, of boys standing on a chair and stuffing their handphones into such a hole before the discipline master comes, sheepishly begging me not to tell. I now feel vaguely disturbed at this technical glitch in my memory. Why can’t I remember the circumstance? Time or place? I must have been their teacher, or someone in authority, at least. Why is it that that memory lasts only for those few moments, and stops abruptly? I know nothing of the events preceeding, nor the epilogue.

But nevermind about my disordered brain. I want to go back to the black hole. So much “scope for imagination” in there, as Anne of Green Gables would say. Except that while her are a “sea of luxurious daydreams”, of cheery blossoms and geraniums, mine are normally dysfunctional. [haha] Sadly though, time permits me with only five more minutes, so I shall leave the black hole, regretfully. Still, I reluctanctly recognize that one cannot make too many excursions into the Land of Imagination in a day, lest the free reign permanently disorientates one. One will has to at least appear normal, you know.

Okayokay. Time to be a teacher again.”